I made my best loaf of Italian bread yesterday. What made it so good? I think I finally worked out how much water you’re supposed to spray onto the loaf before it goes in (for the best crusty crust).

Anyway, I think I’ve reached a peak with this recipe, and it’s time to move on to some interesting variations, or some new kinds of bread. I’m not saying that my loaves have been entirely consistent. Ratios of ingredients, the temperature of the oven, and time are about the only things I have a good control over and understanding of. The weather patterns in my apartment, the freshness of the yeast and bread flour from Star Market, the bacteria in the air in my fridge, the quality of Somerville tap water… these things all add a certain voodoo to the process.

I like a little voodoo. It helps my mojo. I’m glad I’m not trying to run a bakery, though.

My next experiment will be a cheddar-pepper loaf. But how much cheddar and pepper should go into a 2 lb loaf of bread? The recipe calls for 2 tsp of salt. So maybe I’ll try 1.5 tsp of pepper at first. As far as the cheddar goes.. well, I don’t have a good answer yet. 1/2 cup?

The recipe I use right now involves a pre-fermented biga, which is a quick version of the sourdough starter. The biga is dough that sits out on the counter for a few hours, then in the fridge overnight, before comprising about 1/3 of the final dough for the bread. It’s what makes an Italian loaf taste different from white bread.

Once I get a decent cheddar-pepper loaf going with my current biga-based recipe, my next step will be to start a sourdough starter. This is more of a liquidy thing, definitely more of an animal in your refrigerator. You have to feed it pretty frequently (with flour and water), and you use a portion of it to make sourdough bread. The longer you keep your starter going (assuming it stays healthy), the more flavor it’ll contribute to the final bread. It’s pretty intense stuff.

Beyond sourdough, there is desem bread. It’s a Flemish loaf my boss turned me onto recently, and it involves a 50/50 ratio of whole wheat and bread flours. The desem is like a sourdough starter, but from what I’ve heard it’s even more finnicky. Myriad pitfalls await, most of them resulting in an entirely foul loaf. The The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book dedicates an entire chapter to desem cultivation.

Question: Could we use genetic algorithms, baking simulation software, and some kind of target taste algorithm to create the perfect loaf of bread?

Hmm. Sounds unlikely.